


Stupid

by LadyAJ_13



Series: The Oxford Disaster Trio [3]
Category: Endeavour (TV)
Genre: Bit of a wobble, Fluff and Angst, Kissing, M/M, Multi, Self-Sacrificing Endeavour Morse, Sensible Peter Jakes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-07
Updated: 2020-11-07
Packaged: 2021-03-09 00:13:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,324
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27435646
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyAJ_13/pseuds/LadyAJ_13
Summary: “Boss' daughter, Morse? Never thought you'd have it in you.” He drops to perch on the edge of Peter's desk and elbows him in the shoulder. “Hey, now we know how he got that bagman role, right? Always knew it was a fix.”
Relationships: Peter Jakes/Endeavour Morse, Peter Jakes/Endeavour Morse/Joan Thursday
Series: The Oxford Disaster Trio [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1541815
Comments: 9
Kudos: 35





	Stupid

**Author's Note:**

> Not the new instalment of this series I've been talking about. I just realised I'd never written this part, and I thought - 800 words, a little snippet I can post quickly and get back to the other one I've been wrestling with. Then it ended up over 2000 words. Because of course. 
> 
> If you're reading this as a standalone, background is that Morse/Jakes/Joan are all together, but the Thursday family are under the impression it's just Morse/Joan, and they're keeping it quiet because Morse is Thursday's bagman.
> 
> I hope you like it :)

He might be imagining it.

He hangs up his coat and roots out his wallet and keys, dropping them in his top drawer as always. He'd had to pick Thursday up this morning, wrenching himself out of bed and into the cold so early, and yet Peter’s still beaten him in. While the older man settles himself into his office, closing the door and hanging his hat, he tries to catch Peter's eye. Perhaps he knows what’s going on.

Nothing. But everyone else is looking at him – or at least, the sort of looking that turns into determined  _ not  _ looking as soon as his eyes flick their way.

He's not imagining it.

“All right, what is it?” he asks the room at large. Most people scuffle for papers and pens; busy tools. Peter finally looks up, eyes slightly wide and elbow just nudging the steaming cup at his side.

“Boss' daughter, Morse?”

He narrows his eyes at the figure who spoke. Mid-brown hair slicked back, wire-rimmed glasses, a well-kept uniform that just about disguises the beginnings of a paunch by redirecting focus to the shiny buttons and neatly sewn sergeant stripes. It's Kennedy, one of the coppers Peter used to drink with. He's a bit of a chancer, ambitious but with no real flair for police work, just a ready willingness to drop others in it - and in Morse's opinion, thoroughly unlikable.

“Never thought you'd have it in you,” he sneers with a smarmy grin, dropping to perch on the edge of Peter's desk and elbowing him in the shoulder. “Hey, now we know how he got that bagman role, right? Always knew it was a fix.”

Peter hums, scrawling a signature on the bottom of a page. His grip is tight, knuckles pale.

“C'mon Pete, it's  _ Morse.  _ Don't tell me you haven't got time for ragging on him, this is the best thing in years!”

“Never knew you had it in you,” Peter drawls at Morse. He makes sure to scowl back, a parody of their old rivalry, but otherwise turns away and concentrates on setting up his typewriter. Joan had called last night to say she was making a toad in the hole for tea, so Peter had dragged him out of the office before he finished his reports on the Thompson burglary case. 

Keeping it secret could only last so long, he tells himself. With the Thursday family knowing - or at least thinking they know, even if it’s not quite the truth - it's a surprise they've kept it under wraps this long.

“The girl though, what's her name again?” Kennedy looks at Peter, then Morse, but snaps his fingers. “Joan. Goddamn, she's a looker. Think she's got a thing for coppers? I'd like to-”

Morse stiffens, but Peter stands up quickly enough Kennedy stumbles back. “All right,” he says, mildly but with enough of a hint of steel behind it to raise the hairs on Morse's arm. He smirks at Morse coldly, then catches Kennedy’s eye. “Seems she ain't got a lick of taste if she’s with Morse, but she's a nice girl and the Guv's daughter. You don't want to be heard talking about her like that.”

Kennedy looks thoroughly un-chastised, but nods and unearths two cigarettes. Peter takes one reluctantly. “Weren't you after her, Pete? How'd she choose  _ him _ over you? He cry on her shoulder until she give in, or somethin'?”

Peter shrugs.

“What is  _ with _ you?” blurts Kennedy. “Jesus, anyone would think Morse was your new best-”

“I ain't worried,” Peter cuts in. 

He glances at Morse, and Morse gazes curiously back from beneath his lashes, even as Peter leans back in his chair and switches his attention to Kennedy. He's every inch the cocky sergeant he used to be; not Peter any more, but Jakes. Morse remembers watching him like this, cataloguing his movements, never quite sure if he wanted to shove him away or pull him in. He remembers the first time he realised Peter watched back, too. How he’d run hot and cold with desire and panic and shock, and finally stalked out of the office to re-question a useless witness just to get some air.

“He'll mess it up. He always does, can't hold a girl to save his life.”

That smirk again, but this time the coldness bites. Because it's true, isn't it? Oh, he can tell Peter doesn't really mean what he's saying, although it's a good enough show to fool most people, and especially a copper of Kennedy’s calibre. But it doesn’t mean he's  _ wrong. _ Morse does screw things up, always, and what he's got now is the best thing he's ever had. Better than Susan even, and look how that ended. This will too. It’s inevitable. 

“Then it'll be me and Joan-”

“-vulnerable, right, and-”

“-happily ever after,” Peter bulldozes over Kennedy. 

Morse stares at his desk. The grain and varnish streaks are familiar, many tough cases puzzled out by letting his gaze blur on the wood, his mind unfocus and spiral away across possibilities until one thing adds to another and it all makes sense. He doesn’t need to make sense of this, though. It's been laid out quite clearly.

He's going to lose them both, but they'll still have each other.

The thought twists, and keeping his breathing steady is tough. He hopes Kennedy thinks it's rage, that he's holding himself in check, not – not this. Not a deep, searing cut of realisation. They'll have each other, and a part of him is glad, but the selfish part aches and wants to curl into a ball. They'd be better without him. Peter could wine and dine Joan all over town, they could go dancing, they could go to the Policeman’s Christmas ball. They could date properly, out in the open, and then when the time came they could get married, buy a house, have babies. Nothing dangerous, nothing hidden in darkness and secrets and lies.

That was what Peter wanted, wasn't it? Him and Joan. He'd never been thinking about Morse, never burned for him at night. It had all been competition; he never realised he looked at Morse too, not until it was laid out in front of him. And Joan couldn't choose, that was how they ended up here, but eventually it's not going to be a choice, it's -

He stands up. The hustle and bustle of the office has faded away, but he still has to get out. He walks blindly, and when he looks up he's surprised to see his own face.

Oh right. The bathroom. The mirror.

He breathes.

He can't lose them. But he poisons things with his very presence. He's best when hauled in to fix a problem, find a killer, and then jettisoned again before he can do too much damage of his own. When he cares, people get hurt. Oh god, and he cares about Joan and Peter. It scares him a little. It's not been that long really, but they feel like a part of him. A part he should carefully carve away; give it a chance to grow and thrive on it's own.

The door bangs and he jumps, fingers skittering on the cool sink porcelain.

“Morse, you idiot. Why'd you bail? You were meant to fight me back.”

He doesn’t say anything. He wants Peter, but here – here he's too much Jakes. He doesn’t want Sergeant Jakes. He doesn’t even want Peter Jakes, not really, not right now, with the jabs and barbs down the pub and being owed a pint and good-natured bickering over who gets to drive. He just wants  _ Peter.  _ Fluffy-haired on Joan's sofa, and flipping eggs in his pyjama bottoms and wondrously, shockingly willing to let his long limbs be manhandled until they tangle together in bed.

“Morse?”

He wants Joan too. But here she’s the boss’ daughter, someone to be gossiped over, not the sparky, strong girl who’ll put him and Peter in place if she wants to, then fold herself into his arms where she fits just right.

“Morse-” 

Hands grips him by the arms, spin him around and let him lean back. The sink is cold in the small of his back. If anyone were to walk in it looks confrontational, but Peter’s fingertips stroke lightly instead of digging bruises, and his expression is clouded with worry.

“Morse, what is this? I had to say those things, you know I don’t mean-”

“They’re true.”

Oh. He hadn’t meant to say that. Telling Peter will make everything more difficult, and he should  _ \-  _ he really  _ should  _ give them a chance on their own. He should slip away.

“What?”

It’s not Jakes, he realises. The eyes don’t change and he’s just Peter now; it breaks the wall he was so tentatively building.

“I’ll mess it up, do something stupid. I always do. But you and Joan, you’ll have each other-”

“Stop.”

He looks at Peter quizzically. 

“Have you had that big brain of yours spinning on this since you left the office?”

“It’d be better - easier - with just you and her. And I-”

It was meant to be a peck, he can tell; a fleeting reassurance, already so dangerous here in the station. But he can’t let it go, much as he should. He holds on, pushes for more because he  _ wants _ and Peter gives it to him, opening beneath him until he can curl their tongues together. He can’t mess Peter up here, not his Jakes persona with his perfect hair and his perfect shirts, so he doesn’t run his fingers through greased strands and he doesn’t pull shirttails free so he can slide up and touch the warm skin of his back. It would be too far, anyway, and he contents himself with one palm wide on the span of his ribcage and his other fingers curled in the belt at his hip, the one thing he can grip and pull and leave no trace.

“Fuck Morse,  _ this  _ is stupid,” Peter whispers against his lips.

It is stupid. But it’s kiss-drunk stupid, the kind of stupid he  _ wants  _ to be. Not the other stupid, the one that ruins things and goes too far and gives too little until he’s all alone.

“Morse, Morse, shh.” 

Careful hands edge him backwards, the world rushing back in. The odd smell that always lurks in this bathroom, the chill of the sink behind him, the points of steadying warmth where Peter’s hands still rest. He doesn’t want them to go.

“I don’t just want Joan. I don’t want to parade her around in front of the other sergeants, and I don’t want to wear the rings and have the house and 2.4 kids and dog and then - then grandkids and pensions and, I don’t know, whatever you’re meant to fill your days with when you give up chasing bad guys.”

It’s a lie, surely. Everyone wants that, the happy ever after - the things they’ve cut themselves off from with this unusual life. But it’s a pretty lie all the same. He wants to believe.

“Not unless you're there too.”

His breath catches. You’re supposed to think those things when you’re with a girl. It’s not the same with men. It’s meant to be heat and release and kept hidden, and what they have is all of that but it’s more too, and Peter’s just - just said he wants them in the light. It’s impossible of course. But just to know he wants it.

“I don’t know how we’re meant to figure that out,” he says, as his heart jackrabbits.

Peter shrugs. “We’ve got time.”

“We’d need a new world.”

“It’s changing every day.”

It is. Not fast enough, never fast enough - but there are whisperings. Rumbles of laws being revoked, and every day another scandal in the papers that become less scandalous in the retellings. Surely it’s stupid to think it, to even get their hopes up. 

“Meet me at Joan’s tonight?”

He nods. 

“I mean it Morse, no last minute falling on your damn sword. If you don’t turn up you better be bleeding out somewhere, and I’ll have the full force of Oxford City Police looking for you. They won’t be happy if they find you pickling yourself in whiskey to the demented warblings of some opera singer.”

“I’ll be there,” he promises. He looks at his watch. Jesus, it’s only half past nine. He feels wrung out by the day already, and it’s barely even started.

A door slams down the corridor, and Peter startles back a step, then straightens his cuffs. “All right, ignore what anyone says about Joan. Stick close to Thursday for now - they won’t dare near him and they’ll get bored eventually. Besides **,** I heard Johnson’s dating his ex-girlfriend’s sister on the quiet, so they’ll get wind of that by lunchtime if I have anything to say about it. Just make sure to give me your best scowl on the hour every hour, so no one thinks the timing’s suspicious.”

He gives Peter a withering look that splinters when Peter laughs. 

“That’s the one!”

Peter ducks in quick, and he raises his head for a last kiss, but Peter drops one on his forehead instead. He flushes. Peter stalks away, throwing a smirk over his shoulder, gone before Morse can react.

It’s ridiculous, he thinks, turning to face the mirror and helplessly trying to neaten his hair, ignoring the bloom of red across his cheeks. He’s a grown man, for god sakes, you don’t  _ do  _ that to grown men. Except. Except it felt like something from the light, something settled and comfortable and long lasting; the exact opposite of the flash in the pan loves he’s had before. He clears his throat, and meets his own eyes in the mirror. He just has to get through today, and then he gets to go home to Joan and Peter.

And maybe Peter will do it again.


End file.
